Fighting with Goliath

Faced with steadily growing expenditures of the public health care insurance companies, rising statutory contributions for health care insurance and constantly high unemployment, the German government decided to introduce a reform of the public health care insurance scheme that came into force in January 2004. The first part of this paper discusses the reasons for the reform and presents its central elements. Since the reform was introduced to contribute to an increase of legal employment by a reduction of statutory contributions to the public health care scheme, I will discuss the reform's potential to increase employment. In the next step the paper illustrates alternative models of health care reform (citizen's scheme and individual health care premium) and compares their potential for job growth. Although the health care reform of the government considers both the need to reduce statutory contributions to public health care insurance and to ease income tax in order to compensate for higher individual payments for medical treatment, its potential for job growth is limited because it lacks support from the health care bureaucracy and the pharmaceutical industry. A reform of welfare state politics resembles a fight with a Goliath made up of powerful interest groups, a reluctant bureaucracy and uncertain socio-economic outcomes

Bureaucracy · Business · Economic growth · Economics · Government (linguistics · Health care · Health care reform · Market economy · Payment · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Statutory law · Welfare · Welfare reform · German Economic Analysis & Policies · Law · Finance · Health Policy

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